Are the Gatekeepers Vril-Ya?

[Guest]

I believe there is a lot of confusion as to just who and what the Ancient Order of the Keepers are. Especially the Gatekeepers, these guys:

I have often referred to these beings be called the Vril-Ya. Now, that is fine and dandy but I can tell you for a fact that it is not as simple as that. There are many different interpretations of the Vril-Ya and I believe that for all intents and purposes, they technically are them. Notice I said "technically", because we have no confirmation of that and because it isn't that clear cut.

We know from Shadows of Evil that we have had a lot of new beings introduced to us that are Treyarch's interpretations of monsters from Lovecraft Lore, an example of which being the Shadowman being an interpretation of Nyarlathotep, or the Parasites being an interpretation of Mi-go. They are not literally these beings. Treyarch have took heavy inspiration from these very interesting ideas and have put their own spin on it, giving something original to the story with a real world basis.

A lot of people immediately assumed that the Gatekeepers were Vril-Ya, without any proof at all, because they could do seemingly great things. That is an incorrect mindset. This community is well known for easily explaining things by saying "the Vril-Ya did it", it is basically a scapegoat that is honestly really bad because it does not reflect properly on what the Vril or Vril-Ya even are.

But in Der Eisendrache, we see a book on the stone coffin of a Gatekeeper, that very blatantly has the word "Vril" on it. Does that confirm that the Gatekeepers are "Vril-Ya"? No, it does not. What that book has the intent of doing is to pointing us in a certain direction. The Gatekeepers are original ancient trans-dimensional beings that have been introduced to the story. But, like the Shadowman and many other beings, they take influence from outside material. One of these sources being the Vril-Ya. There are a great number of differences between the two, as many as there are similarities. So I would not stop and say that the Vril-Ya are the only thing being interpreted into the Gatekeepers. We can even see by their looks and lack of communication that they must be inspired by something else too, as Vril-Ya are nothing like that in any materials.

So, in conclusion, the Gatekeepers are inspired by the idea of the Vril-Ya but are not directly them, as is with every other being in the story. They are the ones who created things like the Vril Device and MPD, but that does not mean that they themselves are Vril. In fact, from the stories perspective it means that the idea of the Vril-Ya are based off of the Gatekeepers. This is a theme I expect will carry over to Baphomet, another entity that I only believe was used as the source material and basis of some ancient being.

[Tac]

I'm going to disagree with you here, I don't see the Keepers being inspired by the Vril-ya. Like, yes, they are Gatekeepers, not Vril-ya. But for all intents and purposes, I think saying they're the same thing and using the two interchangeably doesn't hurt a thing and it's not really incorrect.